Friday 25th May 2012
Today marks the start of the second Men’s $10k event here in Mersin, Turkey and our final day of preparation before the qualifying starts tomorrow.
We had started to taper down the training yesterday and today was an even lighter day as we wanted to make sure Dave is 100% physically and mentally ready before he plays his first round match. Even though Dave didn’t see it that way, we did have a bit of a lie in this morning as we met for breakfast at 8am – it was definitely a lie in compared to the 6.30am breakfasts we’d had on the last 4 days!! By 9.30am we were on court warming up for a speed session which was programmed for the day before Dave’s next match. The session included 38 different sprints and lasted about 35 minutes but due to the fact that speed work has to be done at a maximum intensity the work rest ratio was around 1:8.
Speed training on the hard court
After the session we returned to the hotel to shower and change before going back to the tennis club for a nice Turkish lunch – all week we’ve been having pasta for lunch but over the last few days we’ve experimented more with the menu and found that some of the chicken wraps and meat kebabs are extremely nice and also very healthy!
We had a couple of hours to rest in the afternoon before it was back in the gym at 1.30pm to warm up for our on court session at 2pm. The weather has been turning a little over the last few days; the temperature has been dropping and the wind has been picking up but today had to be the windiest day by far. We still managed to have a very good hour and a half session which was only interrupted by the groundstaff having to water the court to stop the clay blowing everywhere including in our eyes! During the session we went through everything in Dave’s game so that he was feeling good before his first match, we then played three sets of points up to 11 from the back of the court before ending the session by working on serve and return.
It was then straight back to the gym in the hotel to cool down and have a very thorough stretch out to make sure Dave’s feeling fresh and loose in the morning. Just after 6pm we went back down to the club to check out the draw and the order of play for tomorrow:
Singles Qualifying Draw
Tonight saw the return of the “Italian Buffet” for dinner at the hotel and we’d both been looking forward to it all week! We both had some great fresh pasta cooked in front of us by the Head Chef and this week I managed to get a picture of him preparing it:
For our evening entertainment we put together a bit of a “Superstars” event: 1 game of air hockey, 2 games of bowling, 6 games of pool and 1 game of darts! I lead after the air hockey, Dave came back and beat me in both games of bowling but I produced a great display of pool winning 5 out of the 6 frames and then finished off the evening with a win in the darts to take the overall victory!
It was then back to the hotel to prepare for Dave’s match tomorrow and get an early night.
Schedule for tomorrow:
John Valenti (USA) (UNR) vs Dave Hodgetts (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd match after 10am
